As “Entourage,” television’s fictionalized Hollywood chronicle, wrapped its season last month, the agent extraordinaire Ari Gold saw his client’s dream movie about the Medellín drug cartel hammered by the audience and would-be buyers at the Cannes Film Festival.

Maybe Mr. Gold was working the wrong market.

At the American Film Market, which begins here on Wednesday, no fewer than three prospective movies about the cocaine cartel and its kingpin, Pablo Escobar, are expected to vie for attention.

Escobar was killed in a 1993 shoot-out with the law in Colombia. For nearly 14 years, his story kicked around the film world, inspiring the “Entourage” plot line about a movie that can’t quite be made. But suddenly, and for no obvious reason, the real-life drug tale has inspired a cinematic battle, pitting players like Oliver Stone and Joe Carnahan against one another.

If all three pictures are made, somebody is likely to be hurt. “Capote,” with Philip Seymour Hoffman portraying Truman Capote in the “In Cold Blood” years, came out in 2005, exhausting the market for “Infamous,” another Capote biopic, released the next year. Similarly, “The Illusionist” and “The Prestige” stepped on each other’s toes when both presented turn-of-the-20th-century stories about magicians last fall.

“That’s not going to deter us,” Bob Yari, a producer of one of the Escobar films (and of “The Illusionist”), said of the unexpected competitive heat.

With Mr. Carnahan (“Narc” and “Smokin’ Aces”), Mr. Yari and others have for years been working to produce an adaptation of “Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw,” Mark Bowden’s best-selling 2001 book. This month, however, Mr. Stone said he would join J2 Pictures, an independent film company, to produce a biopic. Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”) plans to direct the film, based on “Mi Hermano Pablo,” a Spanish-language memoir by Escobar’s brother and associate, Roberto.

Also at the market, another independent film producer, Hannibal Pictures, plans to sell rights to its “Escobar,” to be directed by Alexander Witt (“Resident Evil: Apocalypse”), based on original research and a script by Richard Rionda Del Castro and Greg Mellott.

The American Film Market is an annual gathering of buyers and sellers who deal mostly in international distribution rights to films. The Escobar films, which are all being independently financed, are expected to seek distributors in foreign territories at the market.

(As if the situation weren’t complicated enough, a man named Robert Escobar Jr. recently offered, without success, to provide financing for Mr. Yari’s film, if Mr. Yari were willing to cast him in a role and give him a producing credit. Reached by phone in Las Vegas last week, this Mr. Escobar — the exact nature of his relationship with the family remains unclear — said he had been in touch with Pablo Escobar’s son, who began living under a new name after the Colombian blood baths of the 1990s, and added that he expected to approach HBO with a project.)

Hollywood has long had a soft spot for gangsters, from “Scarface” in 1932, to the “Godfather” series, to “American Gangster,” set for release by Universal Pictures on Friday. And it was probably inevitable that Escobar should join the cinematic queue.

Born to middle-class parents in 1949, Pablo Escobar Gaviria stole and resold tombstones, then cars, before becoming an organizing force among Colombian street thugs who hit the jackpot as the country’s cocaine trade exploded in the 1970s. He bribed authorities, ordered killings and, at his peak, lived with the improbable trappings of a Charles Foster Kane: His possessions included submarines, a fleet of airliners and a vast estate, Hacienda Los Nápoles, complete with a private zoo.

After the 1989 bombing of an airliner in which United States citizens were killed, American operatives joined Colombian authorities in their war on the cartel and its leader. Driven into hiding, Escobar played cat and mouse with police and the military until Dec. 2, 1993, when he was cornered by 500 police officers and soldiers, and shot to death. The killing led to deep mourning among many of the Colombian poor, for whom he was something of a Robin Hood, turning American dollars into food, housing and jobs.

If Escobar’s story had all the elements moviegoers have long adored, it nonetheless got stuck in the Hollywood system. Mr. Yari’s first attempt fell apart when his-hoped for star (Tom Cruise) and director (Mr. Carnahan) had a falling out. But Mr. Yari and his partners recently acquired turn-around rights, and set out to make the film with Christian Bale and Javier Bardem in lead roles, for distribution by the Yari Film Group.

Meanwhile, Mr. Stone and Mr. Fuqua declared their interest in a rival project that had also been knocking around for years. This one was born with a small production company called Sky’s the Limit, one of whose principals, a Colombian native, had family ties with the Escobars.

Mr. Stone is no stranger to Hollywood face-offs. He prevailed in one several years ago, when Baz Luhrmann and Leonardo DiCaprio postponed a planned movie about Alexander the Great, clearing the field for his own “Alexander.” But the resulting film was poorly received by critics and United States audiences when Warner Brothers released it in 2004.

The owners of J2, Jason Felts and Justin Berfield, declined through a spokesman to be interviewed. A statement from the spokesman said, “We are pleased to be working with Pablo’s brother, Roberto.” Many people, the statement added, want to tell Escobar’s story, “but very few can tell it accurately.”

Mr. Del Castro, who been working on “Escobar” for the last five years, didn’t appear too worried about the efforts by his better-known competitors. “I believe we are much more advanced than either of those two projects,” he said. Mr. Del Castro said his movie is budgeted at $22 million to $28 million, and is expected to have American stars, though none have yet made firm commitments.

But he seemed less certain when asked why there was the sudden rush toward telling Escobar’s tale. “I don’t know,” Mr. Del Castro said.